Food & Drink

Shore scores points for getting a very basic premise of dessert: If ever a course deserved the full dog-and-pony show, it's not the apps and the entrées. When it comes to those early dishes, we're still ravenous; we couldn't care less if our escargots are wearing rolled-basil-leaf hats or if the waitron wants to turn our steak poivre into a major conflagration -- we just want to eat, man. But by the time we've made it to the sweets, let's have a little showmanship, a touch of the bump and grind, maybe a laugh or two, thank you very much! That plain knob of vanilla ice cream just doesn't cut it. So you have to appreciate Shore's panache: You don't so much eat dessert at Shore as marvel at it, giggle over it, trade pieces of it across the table like edible marbles or party favors. A "Three Ring Circus" ($9) of electric-blue cotton candy, a caramel apple, and a bag of homemade donut holes is a corny carnival; "banana cheesecake lollipops" ($9) arrive swinging like burlesque dancers from a tree decorated with cotton candy fluffs; the "Shake and Cake" ($8) turns that drab old diner pairing into an exotic joke with Tahitian vanilla and a racy Kahlua cupcake. These are desserts to rev your engines. The night is young. And so, for the moment, are you.